Universal Virtues
Open-mindedness
Give an unfamiliar reason a hearing that could change your view.
In an imagined outing, the route expert proudly unfolds a map that ends at a stairway. A companion points to a gentle ramp just outside the cropped picture. The map is beautifully printed; the missing path is still missing. The expert’s most useful move is to look up.
Understanding Open-mindedness
Open-Mindedness gives a reason a fair chance before deciding what to believe. It asks for more than polite silence while a reply is being prepared. A view may survive scrutiny, change in part or be abandoned. The point is to let relevant evidence and another person’s actual account participate in the judgment.
Read this collection’s historical contextOpen-mindedness: finding the balance
The route map omits a ramp.
Too little of the fitting response
Closed judgment
The expert insists that the printed route is the only route.
A fitting response
Fair hearing
The expert examines the ramp and revises the plan to meet the group’s needs.
A distortion of the purpose
Agreement without judgment
The expert accepts every suggested route without checking where any leads.
The fitting response lets an actual reason improve the decision; neither stubbornness nor indiscriminate assent does that.
Open-mindedness gives…
Fair hearing can make disagreement more accurate. People can identify what they share and where the real difference lies. It also lets someone revise a mistaken detail without surrendering every conviction they hold.
What Open-mindedness makes possible
An unfamiliar route may reveal a choice the original plan did not contain. Another person’s reason can improve a judgment even when it does not settle the whole question. Thoughtful openness makes room for correction and for a considered refusal.
Open-mindedness in ordinary life
- Before rejecting a suggestion, describe the actual problem it is meant to solve.
- Read the strongest available explanation of a harmless disagreement, including the qualifications.
- When new evidence changes one part of your account, say which part changed.
Nearby virtues, different work
Curiosity seeks understanding. Perspective widens the field of concern. Integrity keeps action answerable to considered convictions. Open-Mindedness supplies fair hearing; it does not require abandoning standards of evidence or endorsing harm.
Open-mindedness and its counterfeits
Performative listening is a counterfeit of Open-Mindedness: the route expert invites suggestions but refuses to examine the missing ramp. Genuine openness permits a relevant reason to affect the plan. Indiscriminate acceptance is another counterfeit; hearing a claim does not make it sound.
How to cultivate Open-mindedness
Practice stating a view in a form its holder recognizes. Identify what would count for or against it. When you revise, distinguish the evidence from the social pressure to agree. A useful hearing can end with an honest, well-grounded difference.
Try it today
In a routine, low-stakes disagreement, ask what the other person’s strongest reason is. Check that you have understood it before replying. Consider whether it changes any detail of your position.
Keep the practice proportionate
You may decline a discussion, especially where coercion or harassment is present. No exercise requires contact with someone unsafe or treating demeaning claims as equally worthy.
A question worth returning to
Can I describe the view I rejected without making it easier to dismiss?
Quotations and further reading
These historical passages offer different philosophical and literary perspectives. Each note identifies its setting, point of comparison and relevant limits; none supplies an official definition of this strength.
In the disorder and confusion sometimes incident to growth and progress, the community may be unable to see anything but the unlovely struggle itself.
Jane Addams · Democracy and Social Ethics
INDUSTRIAL AMELIORATION
Addams asks whether a community can recognize growth when its appearance is disorderly. The surrounding discussion concerns industrial conflict.
I am, indeed, hopeful, but can I give a date to the accomplishment of my hope, and say that it will happen in my life or yours?
William Morris · Hopes and Fears for Art
The Art of the People
Morris declares hope while declining to date its fulfilment. Commitment and certainty remain different.
The unfading boyishness of hope and its vigorous irrationality are nowhere better displayed than in questions of conduct.
Robert Louis Stevenson · Virginibus Puerisque, and Other Papers
II.
Stevenson examines the irrational confidence of hope in his essay on marriage. His irony invites scrutiny of expectation rather than a rejection of hope.
If a man is mistaken, instruct him kindly and show him his error.
Marcus Aurelius · The Thoughts (Meditations)
BOOK X. · George Long; linked edition
Marcus asks for kind instruction when another person is mistaken. Correcting an account need not become humiliating its holder.
There is the love of being sincere without the love of learning;— the beclouding here leads to an injurious disregard of consequences.
Confucius (Analects, transmitted sayings) · The Analects
BOOK XVII. YANG HO. · James Legge; transmitted dialogues, attributed speakers identified
Speaker: Confucius (the Master), in transmitted dialogue
Confucius warns that sincerity without learning can disregard consequences. An honest conviction still benefits from a willingness to learn.
Augustin, Origeti, and Hippocrates have published the errors of their opinions; I, moreover, of my manners.
CHAPTER V——UPON SOME VERSES OF VIRGIL · Charles Cotton translation, William Carew Hazlitt edition, 1877
Montaigne includes errors of his own conduct alongside earlier writers’ published errors. Openness becomes substantial when correction reaches ourselves.
A prejudice is a fond obstinate persuasion, for which we can give no reason; for the moment a reason can be given for an opinion, it ceases to be a prejudice, though it may be an error in judgment: and are we then advised to cherish opinions only to set reason at defiance?
Mary Wollstonecraft · A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
CHAPTER 5. · ,
Wollstonecraft distinguishes an unsupported prejudice from an opinion that offers a reason but may still be mistaken. Giving reasons keeps a judgment open to examination.
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